Is the United States Moving to the Left?

Over the weekend, at a Christmas party in Brooklyn, I ran into an old acquaintance, a veteran editor and publisher of serious, left-leaning books. For much of the time I’ve known him, he’s been busy bemoaning the state of American politics—the entire works of the Bush Administration and the G.O.P., obviously, but also the prevarications and retreats of Obama’s first term: the capitulation to Wall Street, the drone attacks, the failure to close Gitmo, and so on. On this occasion, I fully expected to hear another litany of complaints, but it didn’t happen. In fact, my old cobber was in a good mood. “The country’s moving to the left,” he announced with a smile.

Could it be true? Does Barack Obama’s reëlection, and the Democrats’ retention of a handy majority in the Senate, signify that the age of Reagan and Bush is truly over, and that a more liberal age is replacing it? With at least some Congressional Republicans seemingly willing to accept higher tax rates on the rich; with the Supreme Court set to hear arguments on gay marriage, which could conceivably lead to the legalization of same-sex unions across the country; and with the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan fast drawing down—it is at least possible to imagine such a thing.

Perhaps. A new poll from Politico/George Washington University, which was released on Monday, showed that sixty per cent of Americans back higher taxes on those earning more than $250,000 a year, and sixty-four per cent of Americans support raising taxes on large corporations. Support for higher taxes on the rich extends across the political spectrum. Fully fifty-nine per cent of independents favor such a policy. Even among self-identified Republicans, there is almost forty per cent backing. “Democrats really have a winning issue here, and we should drive it hard,” Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who helped conduct the poll, told Politico. “We’re in an era now where there’s a lot of cynicism about trickle-down economics.”

That appears to be true. When the pollsters asked the respondents whether they believed that raising taxes on high earners would damage the economy, almost sixty per cent of them said no. The detailed findings of the poll show that this rejection of the trickle-down argument was common to almost all the major geographic and demographic groups: men and women; the young, the middle aged, and the old; Midwesterners and Southerners; Catholics and Protestants; whites and Hispanics; high-school dropouts and college graduates. About the only groups that agreed with the G.O.P. argument were self-identified Republicans, conservatives, white conservative Christians, and members of the upper class. And even here, the support was hardly overwhelming. Thirty-seven per cent of Republicans and forty-five per cent of conservatives said that imposing steeper taxes on the highest earners wouldn’t hurt the economy.

In view of these numbers, it is hardly surprising that the likes of Bob Corker, Ann Coulter, and Bill Kristol are advising their colleagues in the G.O.P. to cut a deal on tax rates with Obama, and even Speaker Boehner is hinting at some sort of accommodation. When you haven’t got any bargaining leverage, and two out of five of your own supporters disagree with the central tenet of your policy argument, discretion is the better part of valor. But will the Republicans, in the coming months and years, also be forced to retreat on other issues they care about, such as gay marriage, entitlement reform, and defense spending? Is the United States, after three decades of Sturm und Drang, finally moving toward adopting the same political model that other advanced nations adopted years ago: a laissez-faire attitude to social issues, acute skepticism of military entanglements, and an extensive economic safety net partly financed by redistribution from the wealthy?

On this broader question, much as I’d like to believe the answer is yes, the evidence is mixed. At this moment of hope for progressives, it is important not to overstate the societal shift that has taken place. Support for gay marriage, perhaps because it can be framed as a basic libertarian argument that appeals to moderates, liberals, and conservatives, has been growing steadily during the last decade. A Gallup poll carried out in late November showed that fifty-three per cent of Americans support legalization, and forty-six per cent oppose it. In the new Politico poll, seventy per cent of respondents expressed support for gay marriage or same-sex civil unions, which are currently legal in about a dozen states. However, the findings weren’t universally positive. Thirty per cent of voters said they supported civil unions but not same-sex marriage, and another twenty-four per cent said they opposed civil unions, too.

On other social issues, such as gun control and capital punishment, conservative attitudes are as prevalent as ever, perhaps more so. Support for the death penalty, after rising in the eighties and declining in the nineties, is now about where it was in 1975, according to Gallup: at slightly above sixty per cent. On gun control, the percentage of people who think the firearms laws need enforcing has actually declined sharply during the past couple of decades. In 1992, it was about seventy per cent; today it is just forty-four per cent.

Similarly, American nationalism and support for the Pentagon remain unbowed. In the Politico poll, fifty-nine per cent of respondents said they opposed making significant cuts to the Pentagon budget, which is close to seven hundred billion dollars a year (and close to nine hundred billion dollars if the spending of other national-security agencies, such as the C.I.A., is included.) Meanwhile, on broader economic issues, such as taxation and spending, there is a lot of ambivalence. Although most Americans favor raising taxes on the rich, they frown at calls for higher spending, or for any fiscal sacrifice on their own behalf. In the Politico poll, fully seventy-six per cent of respondents said they supported cutting federal spending across the board. At the same time, however, sixty-four per cent of respondents said they opposed increasing the retirement age for social security, which is one budget cut that would affect everybody. However, a (narrow) majority of voters supported cutting Medicare and Social Security benefits for seniors with high incomes.

One reading of these figures is that Americans favor higher taxes as long as somebody else pays for them and budget cuts as long as they fall on somebody else. A hardened cynic might categorize that as evidence of a country moving to the left, I suppose, but it hardly amounts to a historic victory for egalitarian and enlightened values. The defeat of Mitt Romney and the extremist G.O.P. he represented was an important moment in U.S. history: the repudiation of trickle-down economics that accompanied it was particularly welcome. Liberals and progressives are understandably enjoying the sight of Republicans in disarray. But there is a lot of persuading still to be done.